LG unveils smaller G2 with slimmed down specs and KitKat

LG has joined the mini club: the company has unveiled a smaller version of its 5.2-inch flagship smartphone, the G2, to be released later this year.

The 4.7-inch display G2 mini retains some design elements of its larger sibling, such as the rear-mounted power button, and will ship with Android 4.4 KitKat. However, LG has also pared back some of the hardware features that earned the G2 wide praise.

The G2 mini will be available in a few different varieties, based on the mobile norms in different markets: for example, LG will release both a single and dual SIM version of the handset, as well as 3G and 4G devices.

LG has dropped the 1080p full HD display on the G2 in favour of a qHD IPS display on the mini, with 960x540 resolution.

Instead of the G2's zippy 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 processor and 2GB of RAM, the mini will be running either Qualcomm's quad-core 1.2Ghz chip or for the Latin American LTE version, a 1.7GHz Nvidia Tegra 4i. It also comes with 1GB RAM instead.

LG will retain the 13-megapixel rear-facing camera found on the G2 for the Latin American LTE version of the mini, but offers an eight-megapixel in other markets.

One annoying feature of the G2 was the lack of removable storage, however that's been addressed in the mini, which comes with 8GB onboard and an SD card slot.

LG is retaining the plastic rear of the G2, which also meant its battery was removable, however the mini's power has been scaled back from 3,000 mAh to 2,440 mAh. Connectivity options include Bluetooth 4.0, Wifi, GPS, and NFC for the LTE versions only.